I only experienced one crash so far on the 3DS version, so that version seems to run the cleanest. It still has some bugs (like passing-through-locked doors type bugs) but nothing I couldn't circumvent with some ingenuity.

But, yeah, the tl;dr version of my upcoming review will pretty much be one of my dating analogies- a girl who makes a fantastic first impression, but once you start dating her for a while, she proves to be more of a nuisance than anything.

But once Serge becomes Lynx, you cherry pick big time. It took me multiple permutations to get through some boss fights.

And thinking about Star Ocean 2, Noel got shafted. He was a jack-of-all-trades, but his commands never took advantage of his healing skills and he ended up being a confused mess. Being a jack-of-all-trades did not work within SO2's gameplay system. My main party in that game was always a no-brainer: Claude, Ashton, Celine, Rena. I know some people swear by the Claude, Ashton, Dias, Rena party but that gives you no way to take down flying enemies.

Just got back from Syracuse, where I played my farewell show with the band last night and did a ceremonial "changing of the guard" with the new bassist. I'm completely and utterly dead, but it was worth it. The band's fanbase in the Syracuse area is unreal and I owed it to them to make an appearance. Faces were melted, tears were shed, shenanigans occurred, and now I watch Super Bowl and sleep.

Thousand Arms (Nelsha and Ratchet cat- fight): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SANRhLOWjgGranted, my favorite moments in the game were two of the Bandiger scenes and when, during dates, the girls would ask Meis if he'd be embarrassed to fart in their presence. I also remember one time in college, my suitemate and I were both playing the game and his then-girlfriend was amused by it and when he was in the bathroom she tried to mess up the game but ended up finding an easter egg.

EDIT: And coming back to the quieter moments, I definitely liked the unicorn cutscene in Tales of Symphonia and most any Sheena moment for that matter. That game flipped the script in a lot of neat ways.

With Sheena in the unicorn scene, the thing is that even though she looks sexy, she's actually the demure one. She's obviously still a virgin since she can hang with the unicorn and gets ruffled that people think she's slutty because she's stacked. And in Mizuho, their attitudes about relationships and all is REALLY strict and Sheena respected it. On the other hand, seemingly demure Raine said she couldn't hang with the unicorn because "she's an adult." That's such a sanitized way of saying she's not a virgin. So who the hell has that half-elven tramp been banging?

I also enjoyed that whenever you chose Sheena as the girl Lloyd interacts with in various scenes, their interactions were more fun and flirty than the boring Colette scenes. And despite its anime tropey-ness I giggled at Sheena blushing at Lloyd's joke about marrying her to be part of the Mizuho culture.

It's too bad that for as cool as Sheena was, I often bypassed her in favor of stronger attackers. Interesting that that game was so top-heavy on melee characters but had scant few mages and healers.

I'm also planning to do the ACS Cancer ride a week later with my coworker and the Parkinson's ride in October. There's also an autism ride that my club does and I want to see if I can get support from work for it.